


Birthday Surprise

by kaithartic (bluedreaming)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Drabble, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 01:17:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1586336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/kaithartic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Baekhyun's birthday and his boyfriend Zitao wants to surprise him with breakfast, a very dangerous idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthday Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> I was working on my chaptered story when I decided to do another oneshot to keep my brain fresh, but that has unexpectedly turned into a longfic it seems. Jenna kindly encouraged me to do a drabble when I was wailing about longfic problems and lack of baektao in my life, and Rina was kind enough to supply me with a prompt (which I gladly took and then ran with in the opposite direction I might regretfully add) and so this happened.

On his birthday, rather than sunshine and freshly cut roses, Baekhyun wakes up to the smell of something burning.

 _What?_ Rubbing tired eyes with one hand (it was pre-issue crunch time at the magazine again so everyone had been running on zero for a week by the time the deadline thundered down with a crash) he stretches out the other, feeling around for Zitao. _He's not here._ Snapping his head up, Baekhyun surveys the bedroom scene, alarmed to find that his boyfriend is nowhere in sight; his clothes from last night have been picked up off of the floor and deposited in the hamper, _wow! You actually listened this time,_ and there are spine-chilling sounds emanating from the kitchen.

"Ow! Bad frying pan! Bad stove!"

Baekhyun smiles to hear Zitao cutely scolding the kitchen implements, but then his brain catches up with his smile and he jumps right out of bed and into a pair of pants, feet tangled in the legs as he half-hops, half-trips out of the bedroom. _Zitao is in the kitchen!? Cooking!?_

The kitchen, usually so neat and tidy, is even worse than the war-torn disaster area that he had been expecting. _We're talking utter devastation on a nuclear level_. Baekhyun screams internally.

The floor is covered with a thick layer of fine powder which, Baekhyun discovers upon bending down and scraping his long fingers through the substance to check, is flour. _How? Why?_ The cabinet fronts are splashed with milk and batter (he's tracing out the splatter pattern in his mind as he traces them to their origin), there are egg shells littering the counter tops like the broken glass that decorates the tops of walls in more violent neighbourhoods, and thick billows of smoke are issuing from something that perhaps used to be his favourite cast-iron skillet. _In another life, another time, before the war began, before the world ended._

Baekhyun opens his mouth to _scream? Shout? Rail at the heavens in despair?_ but his eyes seem to have developed into sub-nuclear missiles on their own because Zitao chooses that moment to turn around, a half-sheepish/half-terrified expression on his face as though he could feel Baekhyun's lethal gaze drilling through the light cotton of his t-shirt.

Baekhyun stands frozen, a mess of emotions dancing across his face. Zitao, upon seeing his expression, drops the spatula. It lands with a heavy clang of finality on the tile floor, the sound of the last shell casing falling after the end.

There is a very long moment of silence as the dust settles.

They're staring each other down over the smoke and flour dust and general carnage of the kitchen (although Zitao, despite his height, is doing more cowering than anything else) when whatever was in the skillet bursts into flame.

Zitao jumps, high-pitched shrieking filling the room like a wailing siren as he shakes his arm whose many leather and string bracelets have caught on fire.

Baekhyun jumps to the offensive, grabbing his terrified boyfriend's arm and dragging his shaking form to the sink before turning on the cold water with a sudden blast to drown out the flames licking his soft skin. In the next breath, he snatches the baking soda from the open cupboard, _never use water for electrical fires_ running through his mind like an urgent litany as he turns off the element and douses the fire in white powder.

_Breathe in, breathe out._

He spins back to Zitao in the next breath, long fingers running over the burnt skin to investigate the damage. _Only redness and swelling._ He sighs in relief, limbs suddenly weak as the adrenaline wears off, leaving him cold and shaking. He's only wearing pants, and the window is open. He looks at Zitao, whose facial expression speaks of someone who has walked through fire, _literally_ , and lived to see another day, but there's a suspicious wetness pooling in the corners of his eyes, and Baekhyun knows he's in for the full waterworks any second now.

Instead, he wraps his arms around the taller man, hands patting the t-shirt-clad back comfortingly, and whispers soothing nothings into one ear as his boyfriend sobs the fear and surprise out into his bare shoulder. _It's kind of wet._

Baekhyun can't bring himself to be annoyed at the younger man after the recent debacle. _I know he meant well._ When the sniffling Zitao finally lifts his head, swollen panda-eyes still leaking the occasional tear, Baekhyun ignores his babbled apologies about surprises and birthday pancakes to poke his soft cheeks.

"Why don't you go change your shirt and we'll go out for breakfast?" He shoos his boyfriend back into the bedroom with a teasing slap to the behind before pulling his phone out his pants pocket and dialling an all-too-familiar number.

"Hello D.O. Cleaning Services?"

**Author's Note:**

> The prompts are [here](https://twitter.com/JJANGYlXlNG/status/464458623553642497) and [here](https://twitter.com/JJANGYlXlNG/status/464460975543173120). I apologize for the war references and general nonsense and my amateur attempts at fluff in general.
> 
> This was originally published on twitter in this form http://simp.ly/publish/VhtGPL


End file.
